Art: Mark Dion exhibits 30 years of work at the ICA Boston

Monday

BOSTON - As conceptual artist Mark Dion stood at the entrance to his new exhibit, he explained that the dinosaur-theme bedroom he created represents the start of his artistic journey.

“It’s like the origin story and a template for the rest of my imaginings,” said Dion, who grew up in Fairhaven and crammed his installation “Toys ’R’ U.S. (When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth)” with all manner of dinosaur bedding, wallpaper, posters, toys and books.

“Dinosaurs are a symbol of extinction, and we make educated guesses about them,” said Dion during a visit to the Institute of Contemporary Art before the exhibit opening. “We impose our agendas on them.”

In “Mark Dion: Misadventures of a 21st-Century Naturalist,” 20 major installations, sculptures and thousands of objects, drawings, and photographs cover three decades of his career. As a contemporary naturalist, he is a collector and an activist, whose art exposes the threats of over-consumption, natural resources destruction and the global environmental crisis.

“I feel that art is not to be decorative, but to be provocative and generate thoughts,” said Dion, whose works are in major museums and who has received numerous awards. “I want to hold up a mirror to just how bad we can be. We’re at this moment where we can’t see nature without some sense of mourning loss and even guilt.”

The installations are both cerebral and materialistic, packed with details and references to scientific, political and cultural notions.

“Dion’s sculptures and installations are full of the wonder of the world,” said Institute of Contemporary Art director Jill Medvedow. “He combines this sense of amazement with a piercing awareness of what we risk when we squander our natural resources and contribute to their demise.”

Early in his career, Dion said he found his artistic inspiration in natural history.

“I became frustrated with contemporary art that was about art and the limitations of the questions art asked,” he said. “I found myself much more excited when I went to natural history museums where the questions were ‘Who are we? What does the natural world look like and what are our obligations to it?’ I wanted to marry the way the naturalist looks at our world with the critical perspective of the artist.”

Instead of presenting Dion’s career chronologically, curator Ruth Erickson organized the works based on his investigative and creative methods: collecting, field work, excavation and cultivation.

As a naturalist and artist, Dion explored South America, Alaska and elsewhere. In the rainforest of the Amazon, he gathered botanical and zoological specimens displayed in “On Tropical Nature.” In a remote part of Alaska, Dion gathered hundreds of plastic jugs, buoys, bottle caps and other detritus washed up on shore for his “Cabinet of Marine Debris.” As though summoning a beauty marred by trash, he arranged the bottle caps in chromatic colors on a cabinet shelf.

In “Classical Mind,” Dion challenged the Western belief in the hierarchy of life, with human beings above all else. It features a tier of taxidermy animals, plants, butterflies, corals, shells, mushrooms, minerals and human tools.

“So many times science has been perverted by politics and ideas,” he said. “People twist a vision of nature to find a justification for their own hierarchy and to justify the social order.”

In “New Bedford Cabinet,” Dion displayed items he found during an archaeological dig at O’Malley’s Tavern, which burned down in 1977. Taken together, pieces of glass bottles, ceramic plates, clay pipes, and metal hardware seem like examples of civilization decay.

In a model of the Norway cave installation “After Den,” a taxidermy black bear hibernates in a cave atop a massive bed of trash. It’s as though humans have contaminated even the most hard-to-reach natural areas.

“Never has there been a global culture which has made so much and cared so little for it,” he said.

In contrast to these grim sites, “The Library of the Birds of New York” is celebratory. Visitors can enter a 20-foot high cylinder aviary and stand just inches away from colorful canaries and finches as they fly, feed and play among a tree with hanging nets, binoculars and other bird watching accessories.

“I want to bring people in proximity to these wonderful birds,” he said. “I want them to feel like they’re close to them. People will only care about what they love.”

Jody Feinberg may be reached at jfeinberg@ledger.com or follow on Twitter @JodyF_Ledger.